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Usually we leave political stuff to other publications, but with the economy struggling (to say it nicely) and energy costs constantly rising, we decided to sit in on yesterday's mano-a-mano debate between former Virginia governors (and current senatorial candidates) Mark Warner and Jim Gilmore, who both think a combination of offshore drilling and an increase in production of renewable resources will get the country back on track.

We'll give you one guess who sponsored the event (the Fairfax Chamber of Commerce if you lack powers of deduction from the picture above). Mark told the audience he wants to revive the American auto industry by developing 100 mile-per-gallon hybrid vehicles that would be produced here at home. "We need to be a leader in innovation; just think how many jobs that would bring and what it would do for the economy as a whole."

Jim told the packed house at the Capital One Auditorium in McLean he thinks renewable energy will create more new jobs over the next 25 years than any other industry. "We need more of everything when it comes to energy from solar, wind, nuclear, biofuels, natural gas and responsible offshore drilling, so we're not giving money for oil to countries that don't like us."

Twin Tech Towns, Part Deux

To show our versatility we went from hob-knobbing with political big wigs to doing tequila shots (allegedly) with more than 1,200 techies from both the old school federal space and the entrepreneurial cowboys at last night'sTwin Tech II party at The Avenue on New York Avenue in NW.

ShareMeMe Founders Ahson Wardak and Luc Castera describe their startup as "FedEx for the Web." LaunchBox Digital (the startup-backing company of our friend Julius Genachowski) backed them, so we believe. www.sharememe.com

CRG West's Jessica Orozzo and LPB Energy's Brett Leve.

Wachovia's John Wick, BrandClik CEO Josh Konowe and BlackMesh president Eric Mandel. Josh's tells us his company officially launched its site yesterday that lets companies sell keywords on their sites to advertisers after running in beta. "People can go from playing on our site to actually doing something," says Josh, who made sure everyone knew his company name last night by emblazoning it on the rubber wrist bands needed to get drinks.

TechImage's Mary Eggert and Turtle Wings COO Jeremy Farber. Jeremy tells us his computer recycling company is about to get a 3,000-poundhard drive shredder, which is just awesome. He says he plans to make the machine mobile, so he can take it to clients' offices and shred hard drives on the spot. (Insert your own Enron joke here.)

It's the gang from FortiusOne: Ruth Stiver, Mookie Kumar and CEO Sean Gorman. Sean tells us his company is coming out with a new application Oct. 1 called Maker! (we were specifically told to italicize and add the exclamation point) that lets users create their own maps. Ruth won a bronze medal in rowing at the last Pan Am games, but sadly she left it at home last night instead of showing it off to everyone at the party like we would have done.

Tower Club membership director Erika Miller with Social Times founder Nick O'Neill. Nick tells us his site gets more than 100,000 hits per month by reporting on social media trends. Nick himself writes more than 10 articles a day (and we thought we had it tough), so it's no wonder he's looking to getting away to an island (once he picks one anyway) this weekend.

Here are some guys for our medical crowd: HealthCentral Network CTO Scott Rothrock and Ozmosis co-founder Joel Selzer. Scott's company has a collection of medical web sites each addressing specific medical conditions for people seeking trusted information, while Joel's site is a social media site for physicians to share thoughts and opinions on medical topics and treatments. Joel was actually on Wall Street yesterday morning meeting with investors, but caught the train to make it to the party.

NinjaTickets founder Cliff Mark, Shannen Duty and Lustig Communications' Brian Lustig. Cliff's company indexes event tickets to give customers the best deal, meaning he can find choice seats for himself as well. Cliff went to last week's Redskins games against the Saints and is still in shock that the 'Skins came back to win.

David Stegon has a headache today. Send him quiet emails with story ideas at David@Bisnow.com

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